Abound Solar in Longmont was working to win the race for thin-film solar panel manufactures getting to market. Abound Solar employees work at the end of the unique automated production line at their manufacturing plant.

Abound Solar in Longmont was working to win the race for thin-film solar panel manufactures getting to market.

The bankruptcy of Abound Solar, the solar panel maker with facilities in Longmont, Loveland and Fort Collins, will cost taxpayers $40 million to $60 million, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The company will close its doors next week and file for liquidation, according to a company statement. The closing will affect about 125 workers.

The company has used about $70 million of the loan guarantee, and after bankruptcy liquidation the loss to taxpayers is estimated to be $40 million to $60 million, Damien Lavera, a DOE spokesman, said in a statement.

Abound has been struggling with the falling price of solar panels. The company’s technology made a solar cell out of a piece of glass by applying a thin chemical film.

It was supposed to be cheaper than traditional silicon panels, but since 2009 the price of those panels has dropped from $2.79 a watt to less than $1, according to industry consultant Solarbuzz.

Using data from the Dartmouth Atlas – a source of information and analytics that organizes Medicare data by a variety of indicators linked to medical resource use – we recently ranked geographic areas based on markers of end-of-life care quality, including deaths in the hospital and number of physicians seen in the last year of life.

Wednesday morning two independent research teams, one based in the Netherlands and the other in California, reported that the deluge from Hurricane Harvey was significantly heavier than it would have been before the era of human-caused global warming.

Denver’s newest skyscraper will be home to one of the city’s most recognizable home-grown business by the end of next year. Chipotle is moving its 450 downtown corporate staff into the 1144 Fifteenth tower by the end of 2018.